Legal plan to protect our schoolchildren

A disability rights campaigner is planning a legal move to protect special needs children from restraint and isolation in schools.

Beth Morrison, from Monifieth in Angus, is to mount a judicial review. She is spearheading the action because 682 UK families with special needs children contacted her after experiencing restraint or seclusion in school.

Beth Morrison is planning a judicial review to reduce restraint and seclusion

Morrison is crowdfunding the move over government failure to provide an “adequate policy framework” to regulate the restraint and seclusion of children with disabilities.

‘Fundamental failure’

She said the move is designed to hold Westminster Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds) to account over a “fundamental failure to protect vulnerable children”.

Moves are already underway to bring a judicial review in Northern Ireland.

In 2017, after seven years of campaigning, Morrison persuaded the Scottish Government to publish guidance on restraint in schools.

But she says the other UK nations have no guidance to protect vulnerable children.

Unexplained bruising

Morrison, 53, started her campaign in Scotland in 2010. She took the action after her son, then 11 years old, returned home from school with unexplained bruising. He has epilepsy, cerebral palsy, autism and learning disabilities.

She said: “It has to be done because there’s too many children being emotionally and physically harmed due to restraint and seclusion.”